Osprey books accurate?

[Felix C]

Looking at B-29 Hunters of the JAAF
By Henry Sakaida, Koji Takaki and similar titles regarding obscure topics. Accurate? Recommend?

[Jukka Juutinen]

AFAIK Henry Sakaida and Koji Takaki are excellent authors. And it seems that many "obscure" topics get better authors than many well-known topics. Lately I have been pretty much pissed off by Osprey's editorial policy as to what is good and proper English vs. dumbed down and "thirdworldized" English as adopted by mass media and even some pricks of Oxford (e.g. writing "Oberst iG H G Hansen" instead of "Oberst i.G. H. G. Hansen" or "A A Maslov" instead of "A. A. Maslov").

[Håkan]

Hello Jukka,

Just a quick note on Osprey editorial policy beeing an Osprey writer myself. The manuscripts sent to them has often a letter count in the contract (in opposition to the usual word count) which means that as an author you tries different "shot-cuts" to get as much info into the manuscript (i.e. letter count) as possible thus creating some "creative" abbrevations sometimes... The Aicraft of the Aces and Duel series are very strickt on the format.

I also agrees that at least Henry Sakaida is an excellent writer.

Best wishes/Håkan

[Jukka Juutinen]

Håkan, I raised the issue with osprey's staff and they excused the appalling adaptation of the dumbed down punctuation as a voluntary choice. One has to commend Americans for sticking to traditional punctuation. At least up to early 1990s Brits retained that too (mostly). But ever since, the downhill has been steep. One peculiar perversity typical to British publishers has been a rampant violation of international standards as to how abbreviate units of measurement (e.g. correct is "wing span of 12 m" vs. British perversity "...12m"). For some reason, people back in WW2 knew how to do it properly.

[Nick Beale]

"For some reason, people back in WW2 knew how to do it properly."

They really didn't, you know. Just about every "mistake" thought to characterise modern English usage can be found in wartime documents.

[Stig Jarlevik]

I agree with Håkan

Of course Osprey 'blames' the author, since that is much easier than looking at their own shortcomings. I completely understand every author who then 'chase away' all dots and anything else considered 'unneccessary' he reasonably can.

To me, the main drawback with an Osprey book is their disastrous layout.
Their policy of reserving one complete column for small photos and photo texts make a large amount of their pages completely empty, meaning I am in fact paying money for a hefty amount of blank pages....

Had they used that space, maybe even Jukka would have got a book of his liking....

To me, the bottom line is do I want a book which tells the 'whole' story but lacking in 'Oxford-style' or do I settle with half the story and a perhaps better reading experience? I suppose that is up for each one of us to decide.
After all, we don't have to buy their books....

Cheers
Stig

[CJE]

Whatever their defects are, the Osprey series are a good bargain. You can read well-known authors, who really know what they are talking about, for a quite reasonnable price.

[Stig Jarlevik]

Indeed Chris

So in spite of certain short comings, I DO buy many of their books...

Cheers
Stig

[newcomer]

Nobody is perfect, but who cover almost all aces by countries, types of aircraft, wars, etc?...except Osprey of course. Before that publications I really don't know nothing about many of them.

kind regards

Newcomer

[Juha]

IMHO much depends on author, some are very good, some not so good. Of course much also depends on the subject, its much easier to write a good book with stricly limited amount of pages on a rare and limitedly used plane than on widely used plane produced by thousands. While I'm not a A. Price fan, IMHO he did a good job in his Spitfire books in the AotA series, giving a fairly general outlook of the use and mods made to the versions with a more detailed look on some of the campaigns/ops the type participated.

Juha